NASA Operation IceBridge: Airborne Lidar and Magnetometer Measurements of Polar Ice

NASA Operation IceBridge campaign data includes spot elevation measurements of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, Greenland, and Antarctic ice surfaces acquired using the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM). The collection also contains lidar energy waveform and surface elevation data from the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) aboard a Global Hawk UAV, and magnetic field readings over Antarctica from a cesium magnetometer. Data were collected as part of NASA-funded aircraft survey campaigns and are hosted on AWS.

Use Cases

• Modeling ice sheet mass balance and sea level rise based on surface elevation data.
• Analyzing sea ice thickness and morphology from spot elevation measurements.
• Developing or validating geophysical models using magnetic field readings over Antarctica.
• Calibrating satellite altimetry data with high-resolution airborne lidar measurements.

Strengths

• Data originates from NASA's authoritative Operation IceBridge mission.
• Includes measurements from multiple specialized instruments (ATM, LVIS, CS-3 magnetometer).
• Covers multiple critical polar regions: Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge campaigns

Collection Method

Collected via airborne surveys using ATM, LVIS, and CS-3 magnetometer instruments.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, Greenland, Antarctic Peninsula, and West Antarctic region.